


Changes

by aaliona



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Pidge-Centric, Self-Reflection, experimentation with perspective, mid-season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 20:51:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12992277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aaliona/pseuds/aaliona
Summary: Pidge can't ever seem to catch a break. Her brother's finally back, but his presence doesn't seem real sometimes. Don't get her wrong, she loves being able to wander into the control room and see him sacked out on the couch, but it isn't the same as things used to be. They aren't the same.





	Changes

Pidge can't ever seem to catch a break. Her brother's finally back, but his presence doesn't seem real sometimes. Don't get her wrong, she loves being able to wander into the control room and see him sacked out on the couch, but it isn't the same as things used to be. They aren't the same.

Matt is taller than he was when he left. And he certainly has muscles he didn't have before. The Garrison has always required its crew members to be in good shape, but great shape and the kind of physical fitness required to keep yourself alive are very different things. Pidge is learning that lesson for herself.

It's not just his appearance either. Pidge catches the look on his face sometimes when he thinks no one is looking. It's not a happy one. He has this sense of sadness that rests in each feature, leaving him so profoundly changed from the Matt she used to know that Pidge isn't always sure he's the same person.

She doesn't blame him for the changes, of course. He's been fighting for his life a full year longer than Pidge has been out in space, and while she'd vowed not to rest until she found them... That wasn't a realistic goal. She's done other things. She had periods of waiting and struggling while on Earth. Now that she's a Paladin of Voltron, she's also got other expectations. People are counting on Pidge to come through. They've had enough rockiness with Keith's struggles lately. Pidge doesn't really believe he's gone to stay, but little moments like that have forced her to put other things first.

And they don't have Dad.

Pidge tries not to think about it too much. She tries not to read too much into Matt's sadness. He's lost a lot of people in his fight--more than she has. Pidge tries not to be selfish. He's not trying to guilt her when he mentions a lost comrade from their first fight or the creature who went on an intel mission and never came back. Those people are labeled missing in his world, but they can't be called dead yet. They may as well be. Pidge remembers that same feeling from her days wanting to find them on Earth. 

She was desperate for answers and information, but "death by pilot error" never felt right. It never made sense. Throughout it all, Pidge has often wondered how things would have turned out if she hadn't made the choice not to accept their death. 

She wouldn't be here.

The paladins may have formed anyway, but Pidge wonders who their fifth would have been. Would Allura have stepped up from the beginning? Would Lance and Hunk have found their way to Shiro's containment area if they hadn't come looking for her? Would Keith have made his escape? She likes to think the two of them would have made it--that Keith and Shiro would have set out without the rest of them and eventually tracked down the Blue Lion. Pidge has no idea if they could have done it before Zarkon's ships made it to Earth, but she highly doubts Blue would have let them in. Keith isn't exactly her type.

Things happened for a reason, Pidge knows, and she was meant to be here now, even if she doesn't believe in a higher being forcing it to happen. For her and the rest of the paladins to get where they are now, she had to refuse to accept the given answer and push to find her family. She's getting there. She found Matt.

But they still haven't found Dad.

And while Pidge hates to think about on Earth and wonder how things are going there, she knows how much all of this must kill her mother. She knew Pidge hadn't backed down, and although she didn't agree with Pidge's choices, she'd accepted that sneaking into the Garrison was something Pidge had to do. That certainly wouldn't have prepared her for Pidge to suddenly go missing, though.

Was her mom sitting on Earth right now crying?

That thought could lead nowhere good, and Pidge knows she should shove it violently away, but she finds herself weeping for her mother. Alone in her room, she sits with her arms twined around her legs as she wonders how her mother could manage all alone. The choices she's made have been selfish. She was so busy perusing information that she couldn't accept that she hadn't really taken the time to consider that her mom was going through the same thing.

"I hurt her," she would later admit to Matt. She won't know why she tells him, only that she'll do it in a kind of sick self-punishment. "She was just trying to get by and move through her days, but I wouldn't let her. Not really. I kept insisting that I knew it must be some kind of cover up. I just knew it and had to prove myself right. How could I do that to her? How could I be so selfish to leave her alone?!"

To his credit, Matt won't immediately shove his sister away or yell at her for being the horrible person she considers herself to be. Instead he'll pull her into a hug and say, "Oh Katie," because Katie now means what Pidge used to in a world where everyone calls her that now. He'll never admit how much the change bothers him.

He'll hold her and comfort her in the best ways he can. He's a good brother. Matt knows he can't ever do what either of their parents could, though, and he'll have that in mind as she cries against his shoulder.

Katie's changed a lot, and he'll never admit to her how. He knows the hair is a given, but she's stronger now than she ever was. Physically, of course, because being a Paladin of Voltron and using the kind of weapon she does requires a certain level of physicality. 

Mentally too. And emotionally. His and their father's absence changed Katie. While she seems so much stronger now, Matt wonders sometimes. He wonders how much is genuine and how much sits just below the surface waiting to break. Katie is the strongest person he knows.

But even she has to break sometimes. And they still haven't found Dad.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not super happy with this, but it was a streamline writing that I didn't really edit. If you enjoyed the style or have any feedback on it, let me know!


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